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A relationship that maps one set to another can be confusing. Questions like, “What single element does 2 map to in the output set below?” are impossible to answer because 2 maps to more than one element.

By contrast, a function is a relationship with certainty. Take any element of the input and ask yourself, “Where does this function say that element maps?” You aren’t confused about any of them. Every input element maps to exactly one element in the output.

If we’d like students to experience the need for the certainty functions offer us, it’s helpful to put students in a place to experience the uncertainty of non-functional relationships first. Here is what I’m talking about.

Ask every student to stand up. Then give them a series of instructions.

Transportation

If you walked to school today, stand under A.
If you rode your bike to school today, stand under B.
If you drove or rode in a vehicle today, stand under C.
If you got to school any other way, stand under D.

Duration

If it took you fewer than 10 minutes to get to school today, stand under B.
If it took you 10 or more minutes to get to school today, stand under D.

Class

If you’re in seventh grade, stand under A.
If you’re in eighth grade, stand under B.
If you’re in ninth grade, stand under C.
If you’re in any other grade, stand under D.

These instructions are all clear and easy to follow. Students are certain where they should go. Then give two other sets of instructions.

If you were born in January, stand under A.
If you were born in February, stand under B.
If you were born in March, stand under C.
If you were born in April, stand under D.

Perhaps you see how these last two examples generate a lack of certainty. Students were lulled by the first examples and may now feel a headache.

“I’m wearing white and red. Where do I go?”

“I was born in August. There’s no place for me to stand.”

Now we gather back together and apply formal language to the concepts we’ve just felt. “Mathematicians call these three relationships ‘functions.’ Here’s why. Why do you think these relationships aren’t functions?” Invite students to interrogate the concept of a function in different contexts. Try to keep the focus on certainty – can you predict the output for any input with certainty? – rather than on the vertical line test or other rules that expire.

Next Week’s Skill

Graphing linear inequalities. It’s extraordinarily easy to turn questions like “Graph y < -2x + 5" into the following series of steps:

Graph the line.

If the inequality includes the boundary, make the line solid. Otherwise, make the line dashed.

Test a point on either side of the line. Use (0,0) if possible.

If that point is a solution to the inequality, shade that side of the line.

If that point isn’t a solution to the inequality, then shade the other side of the line.

Students can become quite capable at executing that algorithm without understanding its necessity or how it figures into algebra’s larger themes.

What can you do with this?

BTW

Kate Nowak encouraged me to look at other textbooks beyond McGraw-Hill and Pearson’s. She recommended CME, which, it turns out, does some great work highlighting this need for functions. It asks students to play a “guess my rule” game, one which has a great deal of certainty. Each input corresponds to exactly one output. Then the CME authors offer a vignette where a partner reports multiple outputs for the same input, making the game impossible to play. Strong work, CME buds.

My friend has taken a problem from the world that was personal to her, identified the variables that are essential to the problem, selected a model that describes those variables, performed operations on that model, and re-interpreted the result back into the world. And tweeted about it.

That is modeling – the process of turning the world into math and then turning math back into the world. My friend probably wouldn’t wouldn’t label her experience like that but that’s what she’s doing. That’s what people who do math in the world do.

We know how this looks in many textbooks, though.

The amount of time (t) it takes a number of graduates (n) to cross the graduation stage can be modeled by the function t(n) = n/8. How long will it take all 288 graduates to cross the stage?

Here students would simply perform operations on real-world-flavored math while the important and interesting work is in turning the world into that math and turning that math back into the world.

These guesses interest us in a calculation and also prepare us to evaluate whether or not that calculation is correct.

Sketch the relationship between the number of graduates and time.

Asking students to sketch the relationship, rather than plot it precisely, asks them to think relationally (“how do these two quantities change together?”) rather than instrumentally (“how do I plot these points?”).

Many students will assume the data is linear. But this prompt may invite some students to consider the possibility that the data is non-linear.

I plotted the first ten names and modeled their times with a linear equation. (“Time v. names read” was my model, though commenter Josh thinks “time v. number of syllables read” would be more accurate.) The calculation for cousin Adarsh’s 157th name is 19 minutes. I would be foolish to rely on that calculation, however.

This is where we turn the math back into the world. This is where we make some math teachers uncomfortable, admitting that the world and the math don’t correspond exactly and that the math needs modification.

Watch all of these math teachers make exactly those modifications in the comments of the preview post. They perform mathematical operations and then proceed to describe why the results of those operations are wrong.

Scott: “Add the bit of time prior to starting and a few seconds for a switch in readers as tends to be customary in larger groups like this … “

Sadler: “14 minutes and 10 seconds but given that it is better to wake 10 seconds early than miss it, I would submit 14 minutes.”

Scott #2: “You would probably want to set your timer a little earlier so you are fully awake when your cousin’s name is called.”

Julie Wright: “As an embittered W, I am aware that there is lots of ponderous gravity for A’s and B’s, then everybody gets bored and speeds things up.”

Validate (or invalidate) the answer.

Commenter Mark Chubb, at the end of his modeling cycle: “Can’t wait to see Act 3.” Act 3 is the reveal in this task framework I call three-act math. It isn’t enough for Mark to simply read the answer in the back of the book or hear it from me. He wants to see it. So:

If you built a linear model from the first ten names, your answer winds up too large. Instead of 19 minutes, my cousin graduates at 17:12, sooner than the math predicted.

Why?

In the video, you can hear the validation of Julie Wright’s hypothesis above. The A’s and B’s get a lot of pomp, and then the commencement reader races through the rest.

Many congratulations to Megan Schmidt for her guess and to Scott and Kyle Pearce for their calculation. They all put down for 18 minutes. Special mention also to aga bey for 16.3 minutes. That commenter’s method? “I took the average of all submissions upthread.” Strong!

Again, if mathematical modeling requires the cycle of actions we find here, our textbooks typically only require one of them: performing operations. The purest mathematical action. The one that is often least interesting to students and the least useful in the world of work. So let’s offer students opportunities to experience the complete modeling cycle. Not just because those are the skills that most of the fun jobs require. But because modeling with math is fun for students now.

I ran into this when working up an exponential growth problem for my son’s precalculus class. The CDC had data on the number of Ebola cases which could be modeled with an exponential growth curve at the time. However, the math needed correction because of a sudden increase in cases. The CDC readily admitted they believe the cases were unreported by a factor of 1.5 to 2.5. Thus, a human eye on the data to recognize that and make an adjustment was necessary.

Later, when the curve could be modeled nicely by a logistics curve, the equation was still incorrect in predicting the end of the epidemic. As teachers we would like to be able to button everything up and wrap it in a bow, but the real world seldom works that way.

Rules like these are too quickly abstracted, memorized, confused, and forgotten.

We can attach to them meaning and purpose by asking ourselves, why did we come up with these shortcuts? If these shortcuts are aspirin, then how do we create the headache?

What a Theory of Need Recommends

Again, with Harel’s “need for computation,” students need to experience the “longcut” before they learn the shortcut. Otherwise it’s just another trick in the endless series of tricks students call “math class.”

Several people suggested the same in last week’s thread, of course. Ask students to calculate expressions like these the long way before discussing shortcuts the students may have noticed (or that you may have noticed as a member of the class also).

Chris Hulitt was one of my workshop participants in Norristown, PA, and his group suggested an important addition to this idea. Ask students to calculate this expression instead

Looks the same as the last, right? But whereas the last expression resolves to 16, this expression resolves to 1. That headache is a little bit sharper. How did this gangly mess of numbers result in such a simple answer? Could I have realized that in advance?

Again, this isn’t real world, or relevant, per our usual definitions of the term. And yet this approach may still endow exponent rules with a purpose they often lack.

Next Week’s Skill

Determining if a relationship is a function or not.

This is another skill that can become quickly instrumental (run a vertical line over the graph, etc.) and obscure why it is aspirin for a particular kind of headache.

Let us know your ideas for motivating the definition of a function in the comments.

I think of my 6th grade students writing down the prime factorizations of whole numbers (Why learn that? Oh yeah, to improve number sense and seeing structure behind numbers, among other reasons). When you work with something simple like 24, writing out 2*2*2*3 is not so bad. When you up the stakes to something like 256, writing out 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 becomes annoying. It’s not so much a headache as a tedious process that any normal person would like to make quicker and easier. At this point, I discuss exponents as a means of communicating all of that multiplication without having to write it all.

eg. We can express quadratic trinomials like x2 – 7x – 18 as the product of the two binomials: (x – 9)(x + 2).

If you find that language disorienting, if it makes you wonder why anyone would even bother on a sunny day like today, you’re in good company with lots and lots of math students. At the secondary level, there are few skills that seem less necessary to students and few skills that seem harder to motivate for math teachers than factoring quadratic trinomials. (Sampletheirstress.)

What You Recommended

Mercifully, very few of the 70-ish comments on my last post suggested an instructional strategy for this skill without also describing the theory that gave rise to the strategy. We need more of that kind of conversation, not less.

First, ask yourself, if the skill of factoring quadratics is aspirin, what is the headache? How does the skill relieve a mathematician’s pain? The strongest answer, I think, is that the skill helps us locate zeros. The number that evaluates the expression x2 – 7x – 18 to zero isn’t obvious. In its factored form however – (x – 9)(x + 2) – the zero product property tells us the answer quickly: x = 9 and x = -2.

This is Guershon Harel’s “need for computation,” particularly the need for efficiency in computation.

Once that need is clear, the activity becomes much easier to design. Students should experience inefficient computation before we help them develop efficient computation.

So with nothing on the board, ask your students to: “Pick a number between 1 and 10. Write it down.”

Not a problem. Now put the expression x2 – 7x – 18 on the board and ask students to evaluate it for their number.

This is an unreal and irrelevant task, admittedly, but no one asks “When will I ever use this?” because students tend to ask that question when they feel disoriented and stupid. This prompt is relatively clear and accessible.

Now you ask: “Who got zero? Anybody? Anybody? Raise a hand. Nobody? Okay. Not a problem. Try a different number. Try a different number. Try a different number. Don’t stop until you get a zero. Call me over when you do.”

If someone did get a zero, ask them to get another one. (Later question: how do they know there are only two solutions to this equation.) Record the solution next to the quadratic on the board. Put up three more. Ask them to find more zeros.

Tease the possibility that a more efficient method than guess-and-check exists.

After 5-10 minutes of guess-and-check, help them learn that method.

What This Is and Isn’t

I’m not saying this activity will be your students’ favorite day in your class all year. Factoring quadratics was never going to be that.

But I’ll make a mild claim that this activity will be motivating for students. We’ve created a task with a clear goal state and a low entry and a high exit, a task that is iterative with timely feedback. These features are all common to the most intriguing puzzles. Of course a student could ask, “Why do I care about finding zero?” But they could ask similar questions about Sudoko, Tetris, and other puzzle games. They don’t because puzzles are, by definition, puzzling.

I’ll make a strong claim that this activity will endow factoring quadratics with a sense of purpose that it often lacks. Not purpose in the world of work or surfboards or trains leaving Philadelphia traveling west, but a purpose in the world of math. By tying the skill of factoring quadratics into a network of older skills (especially “guess and check”) we strengthen all of them.

I’ll make a strong claim that this is an example of taking a theory of instruction and enacting it. Finding a workable theory of instructional design is hard enough. Enacting it is even tougher. I love that work.

Is it bad/good theory to expect that they will “construct” their own aspirin? (Do we leave them in disequilibrium until they get themselves out?) Is it good/bad theory for teachers to deliver the aspirin, or should students only get aspirin from other students

I’m not making any recommendations here about how students should learn that more efficient method for finding zeros. Tell them that method directly. Let them discover it. I know what I would do. We can draw from research. But that isn’t what this series about. This series is about creating the need for new learning, not satisfying it.

Without factoring, the only way to graph this is to just start plugging in x’s and making a table – that’s a headache! But when you start plotting the points…Whaaaaaaaat?!? It’s a straight line! How did that happen? What’s the equation of that line (why is one point missing) and how can I get there through a shortcut?

Given that all learners are different, and that the context of learning varies every time we teach, it seems to me to be a near impossible task to create a situation that will be headache inducing for all (maybe even the majority of) students all (maybe most of) the time.

I think one of things that’s important is that our students understand that 1) factorising doesn’t change the value of the expression and 2) why it is more useful. Too often I find students thinking (x-3)(x+2) only ‘works’ for x = {-2,3}.

you’d be surprised how many college students don’t realize that the quadratic formula gives the same solutions that you get from factoring

Scott Hills recommends “diamond puzzles” in the weeks running up to this instruction:

I start out, about 2 weeks before factoring becomes a part of the math lexicon, with “diamond puzzles” in which students must first identify what 2 numbers add to a particular sum while multiplying to a particular product. The puzzle being the point, no mention is made of factoring.